Nirvana is a Sanskrit word “ Literally means blowing out or putting out or extinguishing a lamp or fire.   It was the tradition in ancient India to put out the domestic fires before one began the journey of renunciation and asceticism (sanyasa).” www.hunduwebsite.com/hinduism/essages/nirvana.asp

This morning, after preparing my mind and body for the day I read the following in Pico Iyer’s book The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (p 15 – kindle edition):  “Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else.”

It happens that I have been traveling since early Thursday (it is now Saturday) with only a few hours of time with friends, which left me a lot of time to think or to just attempt to be present.  Not surprisingly, at times I was “in heaven” – just delighted to be in the midst of the beautiful mountains.  At other times my mind wandered around and was everywhere except where “I” was.  At times yesterday I despaired of the route that the GPS had taken me through many small towns of Virginia and West Virginia, which I knew was going to mean I had very little time for visiting a friend in West Virginia.  At other times where it was sunny or storming I felt very connected and was happy to just be.

No one who knows me will be surprised that it was never long before my “mind” would invite me back to the land of thought. Actually I am not even sure that one could describe the seemingly random visitation of words from my memory bank visiting with one another for brief moments as thought.

At one point my mind drifted to the question my friend Beverly was asking of herself while I listened, “How do I die?  I know how to live but I am not sure I know how to die.”   Obviously she was not speaking of the physical act of dying.  From a medical or so-called scientific point of view she is well aware of our definition of the dying process or of death.  She was really wondering about what happens afterwards. What survives? Is there something we can call a soul?  Do all the souls hang out together following the letting go of this physical body?   Do we get reincarnated?  

We know that we humans have been asking and postulating possible scenarios about how we die since we came into existence or at least since we began to record our thoughts in pictures and later in what we came to call words.

The Hindu’s and undoubtedly many other religious thinkers would suggest that Nirvana or heaven is that place where the fire of thought is extinguished. Without thought we cannot claim to have joy, pain or anything in between. It is not a good place or a bad place. 

Many have sought the use of certain drugs to reach this space.  Not having had any experience with drugs I am only guess at what it feels like. I do know what it  feels like to have the absence of thought for brief moments.  Very briefly.   Of course, without drugs there is no adverse side affects although, as with drugs, there may, at times, be some regret about returning to the world of thoughts.  We know, of course, that certain drugs temporarily insure a certain numbness, which seems to me to be different than being present without thoughts.   Being present implies to me that we are allowing ourselves to be connected although perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are not preventing ourselves from being connected.

It seems to be that the use of drugs, power, sex, things, work, or even religion achieves disconnection not only from thought, but also from the essence of who we are and from all that is experienced as normally being outside of us.   It seems to me that, in my experience, the absence of thought as opposed to numbness is not a state of being which I often achieve.  There have been times when making love when the experience has been so intense that I was unable to “think” and could not distinguish between my body and that of the other person. I did not know where my body left off and where their body began.  There are no words to describe this experience. Even words such as pleasurable or ecstasy seem to add to or subtract from the experience.

There were certainly very brief moments yesterday when I seemed to be absorbed into the trees, the pattern of light, and the movement.   I can certainly put myself in the car on those isolated country two lane, winding, mountain roads, which allow for that possibility of connection but I cannot force myself to connect.  I cannot think my way into connection and, yet, here I am attempting to use words to describe which is indescribable.   Pico Iyer says of writers including him, “Our joy, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art.  Sitting still in our workplace, sometimes our battlefield.”(p. 20 of Kindle edition of The Art of Stillness: Adventures of Going Nowhere).

The irony or paradox is, of course, that as soon as we make words the goal the painting one is attempting to create  cannot exist.   It sometimes seems to be that “silliness” especially of children or humor, even through words, is the most effective way to create art depicting stillness. Perhaps it is not depicting stillness so much as it is creating a space for stillness which again brings us back to the absence of thought.

It is curious that we humans are so often dependent on thought to envision or attempt o reach the point of no thought.   How silly that sounds.

Yes, one might ask, “What is thought?”.  In my brief search for a medical definition or physical definition of thought I was not very successful.  The most “accurate” description may be:

The human brain is composed of about 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) interconnected by trillions of connections, called synapses. …Somehow…that’s producing thought, “says Charles Jennings, director of neurotechnology at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research.” (engineeringmit.edu).

“When you read these words, for example, the protons associated with the patterns of the letters hit your retina, and then energy triggers an electrical signal in the light-detecting cells.  That electrical signal propagates like a wave along the ……” (engineering mit.edu).  One gets the idea, but this does not tell me much about my individual process of attempting to use words to describe the goal of being present without words -  the experience when the lamp is turned off.

It seems to be that, once again, we are back to the  tedious practice of  focusing on our breath and not  feeding the story line which keeps popping up to comment on or describe what we are experienced, what we think, what we “should” be experiencing or what we would like to be experiencing or ….

What can one do?  I am reminded of visiting friends years ago in Kentucky who  literally lived in the middle of a cornfield. When worn out or just wanting a break I would go visit my friends who would cook and take care of me while I sat on the porch watching the corn grow. 

I had long since lost contact with these friends who may have moved as many times as I have.   I have, however, a few other friends, including my friend Terry, who I am about to go visit.   Terry  is not in the middle of a corn field.  He does have this magical house which is a wonderful collection of sound, quiet, color, and smells which  he shares while inviting me to sit on this wonderful porch and stare in the direction the creek just absorbing the richness of his loving friendships which  is enclosed in this magical place he calls The Thorn Creek Inn.  So, I will stop for now and just go sit on the porch and absorb the love which is Thorn Creek Inn. Thanks Terry

This morning I fell in love again.  The object of my falling in love was the journalist, novelist and teacher Pico Iyer.  I suppose that I should explain that, for me, falling in love in this sense does not mean that I desire the person sexually although I suppose that can be a part of falling in love.   It is a sense of being connected to another human being who knows me because he or she has opened the door to knowing themselves.  Of course this means I have to take the risk of knowing myself.  Falling in love for me is about connection to someone or something. The opposite of connection to me is depression. 

I have long defined depression as being disconnected.  From my own experience with even mild depression and my talking with and living with those who suffer with DEPRESSION I have long believed that the best description of depression is that it cuts oneself off from oneself, others and the rest of the universe.   It is that sense of drowning in nothingness; that sense of having nothing to hold on to. When one is depressed one has no sense of time, color or movement.  Depression, as I have often said,  feeds only on its own despair and is itself very depressing.

Thus, for me, the opposite of depression is falling in love or being in love.  It is that “knowing” that the other person is me and I am that person.  Yet, at the very same time there is always the knowing that I have something to learn from that person; that sense that I am meant to learn something from that person.

As the readers of my blog and those who have known me well know, I fall in love pretty regularly. I fall in love with a person, a body of water, the perfect flower (they are all perfect), the sensuality of certain food well prepared and well presented, certain music such as Paul Horn’s “inside”, the jazz music of Reggie Watkins, a Bach Symphony, or the perfect tango.   When I fall in love as Pico Iyer would say, “Little jimmy disappears and the whole world comes in.” 

Those people with whom I fall in love are those with whom I connect because they are able to say with words, the silence, music, art, or dance what I have been experiencing, but which I may not have been able to express. Sometimes it just feels like a magical validation of the saneness of my seeming insanity.

Not surprising, since yesterday was Sunday, I met Pico Iyer on the NPR program, On Being with Krista Tippett.    As I listened my first thought was that his voice was present without being forcefully present.  Here is a man who lives in Japan, spends significant periods of time in a Benedictine hermitage every year, was raised by two philosophy professors, has written about the Dali Lama,  loves Thomas Merton and is still learning to listen.  It seem appropriate that his most recent book is entitled The Art of Stillness.  Stillness for me could also be called negative space.

I have previously written about negative space which can be the space between the depicted objects in a painting, the space between the notes of music, the space between the spoken works or the space which outlines the magnificent cherry blossoms of the spring.     Mr. Iyer talks about the “urgency of slowing down” or the fact that in Japan where he does not read or speak the language he is forced to listen.  That space in which he is listening to what is not being said is what I am calling the negative space.

It is in this space that I am able to fall in love.   When I am in love I want to just sit at the feet or even across from someone at my favorite coffee shop or next to someone while watching the sea and “listen”.  I often do not want to talk, but I am very happy if the other person wants to share. I am, in other words, totally selfish and wanting to absorb the rich spirituality of the other person.  Of course connecting with their rich spirituality helps to connect me to that same place within myself.

The last person I fell in love with was Jean Vanier about whom I wrote last Monday.   Another person I fell in love with recently or with whom I am still falling in love is Adel, the imam of the local Mosque and who I know has much to teach me about spirituality.  I sense that he is also a very spiritual man with whom I feel a strong connection.

I was interested in the reminder by Pico Iyer that the Dali Lama encourages folks to continue to search within the religious framework in which they were raised or which is their heritage.  Both the Dali Lama and Peco Iyer talk about religion as the cup or the framework in which we live but which does not imprison us (my words) or hold the essence.

This morning I did not attend a church service. In fact I have missed several Sundays recently. When I attend I frequently attend a Christian service because that is the framework of my heritage. At the same time, I never feel “at home” in the Christian church.  In fact I have never felt at home in a temple, a mosque, a church, or a setting such as the Unitarian church which is very inclusive.  I do feel at home with certain people who come out of various traditions.  I could sit with my former friend Sid, my Tlingit Indian teacher David, my friend Monsignor Kevin,  with Jean Vanier (only in his writings), Pema Chodron, with Adel, with many long time friends, and now with Pico and just “listen” to the wisdom of their silence or the space between their words. I am most comfortable when I do not feel the pressure of a conversation and just allow myself to enjoy being in love.

I was talking with a friend this morning who was saying that he was worn out because he has so much to do.  It is true that he has a busy job, is taking one college class, is in a relationship, is trying to be a good son and friend, and is working a recovery program.  It is also true that, as if often true for many of we humans, he avoids setting priorities, tries to please everyone and then gets too tired or put upon to do the essentials.  He then tells himself that he is depressed, that perhaps he cannot do his job and should quit, or that he should take some other drastic action which would lead to new stress and a new sense of disappointment. This would, in turn, leave him more exhausted and depressed.   I am sure, given his history, that some doctor would be happy to then increase his anti-depressant medication.  I suggested that he take the risk of setting some priorities and accept that he is not going to make everyone happy all the time.  Once he sets priorities he can focus on those tasks.  My guess is that he will be less exhausted, be more rooted in his recovery and feel a sense of connection with himself and his higher power.

Of course, as is always the case, this man is, in many respects,  a mirror of/for me.  It is very easy for me to get busy with very important tasks I have decided must get done. I have found that the more I want to avoid the immediate discomfort of being with myself, the busier I get.  I can also just feel so exhausted that I have to take a nap.   I “know” I just need to stop and be patient until I again feel connected.  I need to be present enough to fall in love again.

Pico Iyer states, as have many wise people, that if we neglect the inner life we neglect the outer life. This results in us having nothing to give.

I envision Pico as this very ordinary man with whom I could enjoy being present without having to talk or perform; someone with whom I could play on  the beach or in the playground  or …

I do know that falling in love is like collecting pieces of myself – experiencing the best of me as it is mirrored in some others.  It is great fun.  I expect to keep falling in love and each time being as excited as a small child discovering something for the very first time.

I am sometimes reminded that I sometimes need to “tone it down”.  I can easily get so caught up with being in love that I overwhelm or make people uncomfortable with my effusive affection. I am reminded of a story I heard about the famous conductor, Leonard Bernstein.  He had been granted an audience with the then Pope and a friend was reminding him how to behave.  Maestro Bernstein was also known to be very effusively affectionate.  The person preparing him for the audience with the pope said to him, “Maestr, the ring. Kiss the ring. Not the lips.”